Newly engaged and in the beginning stages of planning my wedding, something I was really looking forward to was asking a few dear friends to be my bridesmaids. I wanted to do this in a way that would make the girls feel special and would help them look forward to a year of wedding fun! I scoured the internet in search of will you be my bridesmaid ideas, but nothing seemed quite right. Then, with perfect timing, my colleague Liz presented her holiday gift, which included an ingenious enclosure with recipe card inserts. It was so darling and the perfect format for my will you be my bridesmaid presentation!

Using Liz’s recipe ensemble as my guide I printed cards with information I wanted my bridesmaids to have. The cards were cut with varying widths allowing the card titles to appear in succession. I printed and mounted a Will You Be My Bridesmaid? tag on the inside panel, which greeted the girls as they opened the enclosure. In all this project took diagonal enclosures, fine paper for liners and decorative elements, cover weight 8.5 x 11 paper cut down, and free fonts found online.

The cards included: our wedding date and location, the list of bridesmaids, rehearsal and wedding day details, a personal letter to each bridesmaid…and my favorite, a card with the silhouette of a bridesmaid dress to represent the bridal shopping to come.

This project was so worth the extra time – I will never forget the smiles and tears that came when my friends opened their packages. I know they will spend a year making me feel incredibly special, so I was happy to do the same for them while asking them one very important question.

What a lovely idea, that could be used for so many types of invitations (baby shower/bridal shower comes to mind!) Kristen, would you mind sharing the name of the font you used for the “Wear me”, “Bridesmaid”? Thanks!

Karen – Yes, I just used Word and my home printer…nothing fancy. If your printer can feed small cards you and print right onto square cards…if not, you can print onto 8.5 x 11 cover weight paper and trim them down to size. Just make each card slightly smaller width-wise so you get the tabs on the left.

Maureen, if you type your text into individual text boxes (instead of straight into the Word document), you can control the placement and rotation of each text box. In my version of Word you go to Insert, then Text Box – enter your text into the box that appears. You may have to remove a default outline/border if it applies one. Click on the text box and in the Format tab there is a place to control rotation – rotating 90 degrees will give the desired affect.

If you have trouble finding these controls in Word, try Google for where to find specific functions in your version of Word.